RQ: Zunemaps (Application)

[Hawthorne]

Name: Zunemaps

Idea:
Basically, this is the idea. The creation of an application, which lets you load a picture/map of let's say a country, a big city, small town, village, whatever.

But, then it lets you add details onto this picture. My idea is a square-like scroll at the center of the map, you can zoom in/out, if the square is on a "street", then in a small scrollbar on the bottom of your zune screen is the information about the street name & number. So, the idea is that anyone can create their own map, naming the streets of his city, and adding other useful information (how to get from point A to point B the fastest way, regular buses, trains from town to town, bars & restaurants in a city, swimming pools and so on). A map with hotpoints and some basic information. Where to catch a stop out of town, or into town, stuff like that. It would be very useful, a guy makes a map, shares it with his friends, they optimize it and share it back.

Button mapping:
Basic four up/down/left/right buttons stay the same. I'm thinking that the center button should be a menu so that you can pick what to do. If you pick " Scroll " the four buttons work as said previously, if you pick " Zoom In/Out ", left/right buttons work as a zoom in and out function. There should be other stuff in this menu also, like " Add Hotpoint " (also, for the fun of it, we could just call these zPoints?), the problem around doing this is how to write what the hotpoint is, there could be a list from which you could pick (restaurant, bar, hotel and so on), or comepletely writing everything with a built-in keyboard, no idea what that keyboard should look like though. Also, let's not forget that basic alphabets like latin, cyrillic should be supported (when you type on the keyboard, using the lock key switches between the two keyboards you have chosen as your "main keybaords).

Is it possible through XNA? I've seen a little more basic idea of this being done in java for mobile phones, but not on a very high level...

Add ons to the idea:

In the menu, zPoints will lead to a number of choices > Create zPoint, Get to zPoint, List of zPoints. By default, when creating a zPoint, you can choose an area (let's say a university), that's made a different color from the rest of the map (slightly red or something along those lines), a welcome addition to the idea would be zSpots, which would be basically zPoints with free wifi available at that spot.

There should be also a basic search instrument for searching, and the user should have the ability to name a certain region (like nicknames for monuments or restaurants) and adding comments to certain zPoints & zSpots, and maybe the ability to assign a realistic picture from your Zune pictures folder.

Since getting from A to B can't be done with voice explanations without the application being too heavy, the most simple way is by using a simple search function to make the scroll go to your exact position at the moment, and then the application, should basically calculate what the fastest way to get to that points (you should be able to decide between a few types of calculations, depending if you're on foot, in a car or by bus, metro or something like that), and marking the routes with highlighted lines (if you haven't chosen your default method of transportation, it gives you 3 multicolored lines, and you decide what and how to do).

A welcome addition for younger zune users, would be if the application detects the time, and if it's after the sun has set, certain regions on the map are marked as "potentially dangerous", let's say in a bloody-red effect/area, and the point-to-point calculator by default decides to go around these areas (the user should be able to change this, at his own risk).


I realize this project is a hard one, and to say the least I doubt anyone will take the lead to create such a thing (a group of people might handle it, but one single person, hardly if he isn't motivated). Still I hope I can see this some day accomplished by some eager and capable programmer, which, regretfully I am not, but I'll keep on pushing any new ideas that come by in this thread, keeping my hopes up that someone'll adopt this idea

[dabeastofdamusic]

wow what a neat idea!

[lpxxfaintxx]

Great idea, but for simple uses, you should take a look at zNav (google it)

[dan_1986]

that sounds like a great idea.

[Hawthorne]

I like Yahoo maps, but they have very little and outdated information about Bulgaria, mainly almost no maps at all...

Oh well, maybe someday we'll have this application and really prove that Zune is a social element, it would even give us directions after all

[Toast]

yeah definitely a great idea. I have nothing else to say. almost like speechless.

ohh im going to merge these posts so all of your magificent ideas are at the top.

[Hawthorne]

All in all, I'm pretty surprised of the good remarks on such primitive ideas, there could and are better ways and easier ones than the ones I've pointed out of the design for such a program, thanks for the good remarks, my only regret is that no programmer has said if this program is a possibility and how hard it would be to code

I'm kind of bumping this thread to see if any of the newcoming programmers, or anyone who didn't notice the idea would still be interested at giving it a go?